University of Arizona in the News

A news conference Thursday gave the media a first look at the painting "Woman-Ochre" by Willem de Kooning, which returned home to the University of Arizona Museum of Art last month after being stolen in 1985. This week the painting will be hung in the UAMA main gallery, where it will go on display to the public Oct. 8 through May 20, when it will return to its second floor exhibition space and be kept under a case.

The U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration awarded $4.1 million to the Western Region Public Health Training Center at the University of Arizona Mel and Enid Zuckerman College of Public Health to provide free training and continuing education for the public health workforce in Arizona, California, Nevada, Hawaii and the U.S.-affiliated Pacific Islands.

The University of Arizona held a candlelight vigil on Friday night in honor of the late Thomas Meixner, head of the Department of Hydrology and Atmospheric Sciences. "Tom was beloved because of his selfless devotion to his family, his community, his students and his colleagues," said University of Arizona President Robert C. Robbins.

Megadroughts are exceptionally severe, long-lasting or widespread stretches relative to normally occurring dry periods. Now stretching into its second decade, the current megadrought is the driest 22-year stretch the region has seen in more than 1,200 years. "It's such a squishy term," said University of Arizona Regents Professor Connie Woodhouse, who co-authored the 1998 paper that first used the term.

The University of Arizona and larger Tucson community are mourning the loss of hydrology and atmospheric sciences department head and professor Thomas Meixner, who worked to educate the next generation of water researchers and make our world's most precious resource safer for all.

A news conference Thursday gave the media a first look at the painting "Woman-Ochre" by Willem de Kooning, which returned home to the University of Arizona Museum of Art last month after being stolen in 1985. This week the painting will be hung in the UAMA main gallery, where it will go on display to the public Oct. 8 through May 20, when it will return to its second floor exhibition space and be kept under a case.

When Marcia Rieke, a Regents Professor of Astronomy at the University of Arizona, saw images from the James Webb Space Telescope, she thought what a lot of us were thinking: Holy cow! Rieke is the lead scientists for Webb's Near-Infrared Camera, which captured this picture of the Cartwheel Galaxy 500 million light-years away. "It just looks so cool and different than what we thought it might," Rieke said.

"Ricochet: An American Trauma" is a PBS NewsHour documentary that explores the often unseen impacts of gun violence. It delves into the trauma from mass shootings, community violence and firearm suicides. Jennifer Carlson, an associate professor of sociology at the University of Arizona, is interviewed. "At some point in our lives, almost every single American is going to know someone who has been impacted by gun violence," Carlson said.

The University of Arizona is one of nine schools receiving recertification of a Seal of Excelencia, from Excelencia in Education, an organization focused on Latino college completion. The group included the university among its inaugural cohort of seal recipients in 2019, as recognition for offering programs, policies, leadership and institutional culture for supporting Latino student success.

In a complex web of interdependent organisms, microbes – a broad term encompassing mostly single-cell, bacteria-like life forms – perform the chemical processes that form the foundations of life. University of Arizona assistant professor of environmental microbiology Paul Carini hopes a better understanding of microbes will yield insights that can be applied to help humanity weather the worst effects of climate change. "Water distribution patterns are shifting all over Earth.